Under Construction: Framing
by Meriem Clayton
Summary: Sequel to Under Construction: Foundation. While holding SG1 captive, aliens changed Sam forever. Sam has been dealing with it alone but it is now time to reach out to Jack, Daniel and her father. Continued in Under Construction: Raising the Roof.
1. Chapter 1

Notes 

This story was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt has been made to copyright any characters which may not have been originally created by the author, and no profit is made from this work of fiction. Any original characters and the stories themselves are the property of the author.

Thanks my wonderful betas, Jess and Monica.

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Major Samantha Carter looked hopelessly in the mirror. Her hair was barely an inch long. The improvement it represented over the shaved head of her recent captivity offered scant comfort. On the plus side her skin had progressed from dead white to a healthy glow. Back in free America, she could go outside and walk around under the sun. Maybe the rosiness of her complexion was also partly due to that glow pregnant women were supposed to get. The glow sounded like a consolation price you handed to someone who was feeling like a whale but she was willing to buy into it. So, with the glow or the tan or whatever, she looked like a recovering chemo patient. Just great! It certainly didn't compensate for the numero uno, BIG problem with her appearance.

She walked away from the bathroom sink to stand in front of the full length mirror on the back of her closet door. No matter how erect she stood and how much she sucked it in, her tummy was definitely sticking out. The bulge was modest enough that if she had been a little pudgy, it wouldn't have been noticeable. It was screamingly out of place on the magnificently toned body that five months of exercising in her cell had left her. She was reaching the point when even the most casual observer would have to conclude that she either had an aggressive tumor or she was pregnant.

Sam sank onto her bed. Today had to be the day. She couldn't count any longer on no one noticing, no one gossiping. Very soon, Dr. Janet Fraiser and General Hammond wouldn't be the only ones who knew that her alien captors had through some method, artificial insemination or embryo implantation, what did it matter, left her carrying twins. Amniocentesis and DNA testing had confirmed that her two teammates, held captive at the same time, together in another cell, had been the involuntary donors of the male half of the equation. She had to be the one to tell Daniel and Jack that they were fathers before rumors told them something else.

She wished she could get a pep talk from Janet. Was it only two weeks ago that she had considered Janet her closest female friend? Since the night she had seen Janet with Daniel, they had had exactly one private conversation. She had found Janet in her office, leafing through a chart. Janet had looked up and given her a warm smile, concern in her eyes. "Hi, Sam. I tried to talk to you yesterday after I left you in your office with Jack and Daniel but you weren't answering the phone. I was worried as to how it went."

"So false," Sam had thought, revolted, while the grown up part of her brain had tried to tell her that she had no claim on Daniel. He wasn't her baby's father because they had been lovers. She had actually told Janet that she didn't mind if she dated Daniel even if the babies were his. The grown up part of her brain was having trouble holding its own lately and so she kept her firm hold on resentment.

"Janet, I just wanted to ask you to not discuss my pregnancy with Daniel or Jack no matter what. I mean eventually everyone will know but I don't want my friends sitting around talking about me when I'm not there. Okay?" Janet bit her lip. "You already did?" Sam asked, her voice rising.

"Only sort of. I mean Daniel came in here pretty upset after you told him." Janet looked reluctant to go on but squared her shoulders and said, "Sam, he asked me out and I wanted to be sure that it was okay under the circumstances even though you told me it was. That was one reason I was trying to reach you. To confirm that it was okay. I guess I should have waited but you were always very clear with me that you weren't at all interested in him that way. NOW if it had been Jack in here asking me out, I would never have accepted." Janet seemed to have switched to talking more to herself than to Sam when she said, "I've wanted to get together with Daniel for such a long time. You know that I just have to look at those gorgeous blue eyes and that handsome face and buff bod and I just want to jump him right here."

"Janet!" Sam said shocked.

Janet didn't seem to notice. "I have to tell you, Sam, he sure does know how to kiss based on the one goodnight kiss I got out of him last night. If the rest of his, uh, bedroom technique lives up to his kissing, he must be utterly unbelievable."

Sam knew if she stood there much longer she was going to, quite irrationally, punch Janet out. Rather than stay around and correct Janet's impression that she had told Daniel about his baby, she simply muttered something she couldn't even remember later, turned on her heel, and left.

As she drove to work, she talked to herself, for want of another confidant, about how to approach the great announcement. As miserable about it as she was, she couldn't help but chuckle at herself as she imagined setting up a meeting in one of the conference rooms complete with blue briefing folders containing, oh, maybe the ultrasound, and a copy of the quote she had already received from her obstetrician for expenses not covered by her insurance. She could call it "Mission Babies" although that was too straightforward for a mission title. She kept her mind off really considering what she needed to do by searching for a title. Maybe "Mission Reproduction" but that sounded more like a new copy machine for her office, or "Mission Twin Set" which had a sort of fifties ring to it.

She admonished herself sternly to get back on task. Lately she seemed to veer between being weepy and finding inappropriate humor in things that really weren't that funny. Briefings were becoming almost impossible for her. General Hammond had gotten into the habit of watching her out of the corner of his eye the whole time like he thought she was going to explode.

Back to where to tell them. It just didn't seem like explaining everything at work was going to be anything but awkward. But discussing it in a restaurant or other public place had too many unknowns she didn't control. What if her ex-boyfriend Pete, who had given up on her while she was missing for five months, wandered in at a strategic moment? Not to mention the risk that some highly classified information might be breeched by two really shocked people. She could just imagine something like "Aliens made you pregnant?" coming out of Daniel's mouth.

Okay, it would have to be at her place or one of theirs. She sure as hell wasn't going to feed them unless she slipped laxative powder into their food or something. It was unseemly the enthusiasm with which the two of them were forging new romantic relationships since their return. Jack's reunion with his ex-wife and the amount of time Janet and Daniel were spending together were the two hottest pieces of gossip at the Mountain at the moment. Of course, she was about to fix THAT when word of her pregnancy got out. And she had to wonder how many people would say, "Sure, aliens got her pregnant. I think the three of them were just doing the nasty. Have you seen the way she and O'Neill look at each other sometimes?" They'd be hard pressed to explain how Daniel got added in since there had never been any rumors about Sam and Daniel. A truly awful thought then occurred to her. She had heard a limited amount of comment, stopping short of actually saying anything, that Jack and Daniel were AWFULLY close. Come to think of it, this had actually become rather common since they had all returned from captivity. To be fair, the five months the two of them had spent in confinement with only each other for company had to make them close if it didn't make them kill each other. What if people thought Daniel got pulled in because… She wouldn't finish THAT thought even to herself.

She had now narrowed it down to getting them all at Jack's or Daniel's. Daniel's place was such a god-awful mess. She didn't really want to announce her condition next to a coffee table covered with stacks of papers slipping on the floor, discarded clothes draped over the back of the sofa, and a row of empty soft drink cans. Why was he so sloppy and yet always lined up the soft drink cans as if they were on parade? That was a thought for later. Of course if he knew they were coming, he would probably make some feeble attempt at cleaning up. Straighten up the piles, put the cans in recycling, and stuff the clothes under the couch cushion. She shook her head. Okay. She would just ask Jack if she and Daniel could come over there so the three of them could talk. Of course, they probably already had hot dates for tonight but they would just damn well have to cancel them.

She paused for a moment to hope fervently that it was hormones or something else temporary due to the pregnancy's effect on her physiology that was making her this bitchy, even in her own head. To be honest, it made sense she'd be jealous about Jack and Sara, right? Hadn't she thought she was in love with him for years? But why the hell was she so upset with Daniel and Janet?

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Daniel was leaning back in the chair in Jack's office, eyes half closed, and a dopey expression on his face. Jack was watching him, highly amused, as he related the "for publication" parts of his date with Janet the night before. "I think you should name your first child after me," Jack suggested.

Daniel's eyes snapped open and he sat up suddenly. "Whoa. You're way ahead of yourself." He lowered his voice and made sure there was no one right outside the door. "I think I'm in love with Janet. I'm sure in, in..."

"Lust for her," Jack supplied. They tried to avoid finishing each other's sentences around other people but it was just the two of them in the office.

"But," Daniel continued, "I'm still, God help me, in love with Sam."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But, if you and Janet have little miniature archeologists or doctors, you know you wouldn't have gotten together with her if I hadn't made you see how you were wasting your time on Sam and then egged you on to follow through on your plan to test the waters with Janet when we were freed."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "Then I claim credit for the Sara thing. You and Sara have to..." It was clear he was having trouble coming up with a tit for tat idea.

"Certainly not name a kid after you. We are too old to have them and, at this point, I'm glad. It hurt too much to lose Charlie and then Skaara. There are seasons for these things and I'm not in the parenting season any more. Sara and I are having a ball doing whatever we want when we want, you know? And you're rushing the fences a little there." He threw an eraser at Daniel. "How the hell do you get me talking about crap like this? You are a bad influence, Daniel."

Daniel managed to reach up and catch the eraser and throw it back at Jack. Jack snagged it and rifled it back this time. Unfortunately, it was a little wide because it hit Sam right in the middle of the forehead as she came in the open door. Jack did a perfect imitation of a little boy caught breaking his neighbor's window with a baseball. Only it wasn't an imitation. It was where he was coming from now and had been coming from repeatedly in his youth. Daniel looked instantly sympathetic and got up to stand next to her and try to look at her forehead.

"Sam, I'm truly sorry. Daniel was just being irritating." Jack attempted to apologize.

"It's my fault?" Daniel asked, sounding more amused than annoyed with Jack.

By now it was apparent that Sam hadn't been hurt. "Whatever," said Sam with an intonation that sounded so valley girl that when Jack and Daniel made eye contact they began to laugh. "Have I blundered into the boys' locker room at Clueless Junior High?" Sam snapped. They only laughed harder. Sam stalked over to Jack's desk, picked up a heavy book and slammed it forcefully on the floor.

They stopped laughing and Jack said, very warily, "Sam, did one of us do something? I mean before the eraser? You seem upset." This was not the way Sam usually handled awkward conversations. Where was the sputtering it out almost diffidently? Something had turned her into a different woman and he actually rather liked it. Sara's spitfire side had been a big part of her attraction for him.

Sam quite obviously struggled to compose herself and managed to say in an almost normal tone of voice, "I really need to talk to both of you about something important, REALLY important and I can't do it here."

"It's personal," Jack stated more than asked.

"Oooh, yeaaah," Sam confirmed.

Daniel instantly got very concerned. "Sam, please just go ahead and tell us. You know we'd do anything you needed." All of his attention was focused on her now and Jack thought to himself, "Oh Sam, if only you could have noticed the way that boy looks at you and responded before you damn near broke his spirit."

"Not… here," Sam said with emphasis, and Jack could quite clearly imagine "stupid" tacked on the end of it. "Jack, could we come over to your place tonight to talk, say around 1900?"

Daniel said, "Well actually, I." He cut himself off and said, "Of course." Then he really took the prize for Mr. Insensitivity, possibly the first win in his career, by adding, "How long do you think this will take?" Jack could tell he was thinking, "How far do I need to move getting together with Janet back?" and he was sure Sam could figure that out as well.

Sam looked at Daniel with an expression Jack had honestly never seen on her face before. Jack was surprised that Daniel didn't incinerate on the spot and burn down to a grease spot. "I… guess… Daniel… that… it… will… take… as… long… as… it… takes."

Jack hastily interjected, "Of course you can both come over. How about I order pizza?"

"Thank you, Jack," Sam said quite sweetly. "See you later," she said to both of them and walked out.

Daniel dropped back down in the chair and he and Jack just stared at each other for quite a while. Finally Daniel asked, "Do you think she's become bipolar?"

"I'm not sure what the symptoms of that are but I tell you, Daniel, captivity seems to have been a lot harder on her than either of us. She hasn't been close to normal ever since we were rescued."

"We weren't in a cell alone. We had each other," Daniel observed, stating the obvious. "And what's up with avoiding us like the plague and then all of a sudden wanting to talk to us alone?"

"Beats me, but you can bet this is going to be far more interesting than anything on TV tonight," Jack opined as Daniel nodded, looking resigned.

"And less fun than even," Daniel searched about for the dregs of TV from his point of view, "WWW Smackdown."

"Aw, I kind of like that," Jack disagreed. Daniel just gave him a disgusted look and shook his head.


	2. Chapter 2

At 7:05, Daniel and Jack were stationed in his living room, waiting for Sam. Daniel was pacing the floor, worried. "Good night, Daniel, she's five frigging minutes late," Jack said. "I can just imagine what you're going to be like when you and Janet have little Janette and she's five minutes late coming home from a date. Or for that matter your stepdaughter, Cassie."

"Enough with the references to Janet and my future children, Jack," Daniel said.

The doorbell rang and Jack stayed put, not needing to move because Daniel sprang into action like he had been goosed. Jack immediately knew that it wasn't Sam because of the timbre of the two male voices in the conversation at the door. He guessed that it was the pizza delivery guy. His supposition was confirmed when Daniel returned carrying two pies. He just pointed wordlessly to the kitchen and Daniel trucked them on into the other room and dropped them off.

"It's now 7:10," Daniel said.

"I really do know what it means when the big hand is just past the 7 and the little hand is on the two without any help, Daniel," Jack said. "Settle." The last was a command.

"I think I hear a car," Daniel said. Jack looked over at his dog who hadn't moved. "I think I'm going wait for the dog to react," he said. Five more minutes went by. Truth be told, Jack actually was getting a bit concerned but it made him feel less so to needle Daniel about Daniel's nervousness so he continued to give Daniel a hard time. Then suddenly the dog raised his head and got tense. "See," Jack said pointing at the dog.

Daniel stood up and went to the door. He came back trailing Sam. She seemed to have trouble meeting either man's eyes and had clearly been crying. Jack hated to see her like this but he also felt more certain of his ground than with the persona she had displayed in his office. "Hi, Sam," he greeted her warmly. "You hungry yet? The pizza's already here. Or would you rather talk first and then eat?"

Sam said, apologetically, "I shouldn't have let you order pizza, at least not for me. I doubt I'm going to feel like eating anything." She dropped on the sofa, almost as if she couldn't stand up any more. Daniel had gone into Mach 5 concern mode, Jack observed. Daniel sat down close to Sam and tried to take her hand. She got up and moved to a chair. Jack puffed his cheeks out and grimaced. This was not starting out at all well. 

Sam picked up a throw pillow from the chair, looking at it curiously for a moment. Jack could imagine that she was amazed that he owned a throw pillow. He and Sara had gotten very silly in a Bed, Bath, and Beyond the preceding weekend after she had shamed him into buying less ratty towels. Sara had insisted on buying throw pillows for him and placed them herself. Sam shrugged and started turning the pillow around in her hands. She sighed and at last said, words tumbling out almost incoherently, "I have something really difficult to tell both of you. Understand that, well, that I don't expect anything from either one of you but you need to know. You do have rights here and I would never interfere with your relationship with a child of yours." If she had practiced what she was going to say, nervousness had driven it out of her head.

"A child of mine? Has Jack been saying something to you about Janet and me?" Daniel asked, bemused, and flashing on the teasing from a few moments ago.

"Please don't tell me you got Janet pregnant too?" Sam said, her mouth hanging open. "How could you possibly do it that fast?"

"Too? Who else do you think I got pregnant?" Daniel said rather hotly.

Jack interjected, "He didn't get Janet pregnant, Sam."

"Right," Daniel said. "but what are you talking about?"

Sam squeezed her eyes shut hard a moment. "Let's start over. Daniel, you didn't do anything wrong and you didn't get anybody pregnant. But the aliens, when we were captive, they," she hesitated. Both Daniel and Jack were looking at her utterly without a clue. "They used your … They used you to impregnate me."

She looked so utterly miserable that it didn't occur to either of them for a moment that this was a joke. Jack repeated slowly, as if the act would cause some bolt to come out of the heavens and make this all make some sort of sense, "They used Daniel's sperm to make you pregnant?"

She nodded, "And yours."

"AND MINE?" Calmness had fled from Jack's voice.

'Wait a minute here," Daniel said. "You're carrying a child. Is it mine or is it Jack's?"

"I'm carrying twins, two little boys. DNA testing proved they were mine and one of them is yours and one of them is yours." She looked up quickly at each of them in turn and then ducked her head again.

And that's when it really sunk in. Jack and Daniel sat stupefied. No one said anything. Then Jack and Daniel both spoke at the same time.

"When are you due?" Daniel asked simultaneously with Jack asking, "Are you going to have them?"

She responded to Jack first. "Do you honestly think I would kill your baby or Daniel's? For crying out loud, Jack. You lost Charlie and Sha're miscarred. Do you really think I would do that?"

Daniel tried to speak but she waved him down. "I'm due in about four months."

"Sam," Daniel blurted, "you have to marry me. You can't do this alone."

"No I don't," Sam said. "That's no basis for a marriage." Her tone softened. "It's really good of you to offer, so typical of your caring nature, but I wouldn't want to trap either of us in a marriage of convenience. I'm assuming that I will be able to count on both of you to help me and to act as fathers to the boys after they are born."

Jack said, "Of course. That goes without saying." But Daniel, instead of stating his unconditional support, looked at her mutely with so much hurt on his face it was practically unbearable for Jack. Suddenly Daniel turned and almost ran out the door, slamming it behind him.

Sam looked shocked by Daniel's abrupt exit. Jack looked at her sadly and said, "Sam, you are really a fool."

"What?" she gasped.

"That man loves you as much as he loved Sha're, maybe more, and you just threw it in his face. You think the world of him. He's been your best friend until you started pushing him away after we got back. I'd think long and hard about whether you really believe that couldn't grow into something solid." Jack looked aside, trying to decide whether to say the rest of what was on his mind. There was no way it wasn't going to sound brutal but maybe if he'd had the guts to talk about his feelings earlier, things would be better now.

"Look Sam, this is going to make me sound like a conceited ass but I suspect you have feelings for me and maybe you were really hoping, on some level, I would ask you to marry me the way Daniel did. But I'm that rare bird, a one woman man. I've loved Sara since my teens and I never stopped. I'm very attracted to you and in another life, one without Sara, we could have had something. I can't choose you over Sara now. It wouldn't be fair to any of us."

Sam was absolutely still, her face drained of all color. Jack wanted to stop, even take it back but he'd gotten this far. He had to finish. "Daniel's so full of love, so open with his feelings. He can love and love again. He loved Sha're and he loves you. Sam, heads up. He's falling for Janet hard. You may have just driven him the rest of the way into her arms. Be sure you don't want him because your window of opportunity is almost gone."

Sam stirred to life, stood up, dashing tears from her cheeks and, without looking at him, made her own hasty exit. Jack sat in the chair a long time, hurting. He hurt for Sam. He hurt for his baby and Daniel's who wouldn't have the advantage of having all their parents together as a family. He hurt for Daniel, condemned to be a part time father and rejected so openly by a woman he loved. He hurt for Sara. It would cut her like a knife, having lost Charlie and not able to have another child, to have Sam present him with a son. And, selfishly, he hurt most of all for himself. Of course he hurt for the situation with his son but the number one pain, the one making him break out in a cold sweat, was the fear that he would loose Sara over this, again.

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Somehow Sam got home. She didn't know what she expected when she made her announcement but that wasn't it. She walked shakily into the house and looked longingly at a bottle of white wine purchased before she had been captured. Unable to drink, she turned to the permissible addiction of a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream. She sat at the counter on a high stool and ate it mechanically. It tasted a little off because of the salty tears that kept falling into it but she ate every bite.

As she thought about her options, or lack of them, she paused a moment to wonder at herself. Had she really fantasized in captivity at a future with Daniel as well as Jack? At the time she had convinced herself that it was because she didn't dare just focus on Jack and perhaps lose her connection to what was real and what wasn't. Now she thought about how jealous she had been in the past few weeks, not only of Sara but also of Janet.

No. It wouldn't work. In her daydreams, it had been romance and passion with Jack. With Daniel she had never visualized anything past making out. It had all been about companionship and sharing. She didn't want to settle for that. She wanted the fierce love her parents had had that kept them together even though her father wasn't around much. It couldn't ever be like that with Daniel, could it?

Her gaze fell on a sketch pad and colored pencils left on the counter since she'd brought them home from Walmart a couple of weeks before. She had picked them up on a whim when she had filled the prescription for prenatal vitamins after her first visit to her ob-gyn. Still sniffing, she pulled the pad toward her and opened it up. Time to draw the house she would like to have with her two little ones, not the houses that could never be that she had drawn over and over in her captivity. First, though, she needed to expunge those other houses from her mind, the way she had physically eliminated them by burning their drawings in the fireplace.

She stands outside the A-frame where she and Jack live. It's a cloudy night outside the dark, still house. Jack and their dogs aren't there. In fact, there is no one at all for probably 50 miles in every direction. The wind is whipping through her hair and what had seemed like natural beauty around her in the past, just looks desolate and lonely. She enters the house and walks from room to room. At first she just looks bleakly at all the things they had enjoyed together but then she begins to knock things over, sweep objects to the floor, and kick them aside. She plucks up a hockey trophy from Jack's youth and starts bashing things with it. The wedding pictures grouped together on one wall have their glass shatter very satisfactorily. She breaks a window. She pockets the fire starter next to the fireplace and, at last, she walks into the garage and picks up a can of gasoline. She walks through the first floor with the gasoline, dousing things liberally. The can has more gas in it than is really believable but this is her fantasy. Throwing the can aside just inside the foyer, she uses the starter and, as the blaze begins to spread, she leaves. It's a beautiful conflagration watched from the distance, a terrible heat that can only keep her warm for a while.

She walks now outside the Victorian that she and Daniel share. But unlike the A-frame, it isn't dark. There's a light on upstairs. She walks in slowly, noticing that all the child type clutter is now baby paraphernalia. Instead of a tricycle, there's a double stroller and the lego construction is replaced by a diaper bag on the front hall table. She picks up a rattle lying on the floor and clutches it as she climbs the stairs. One of the two sets of twins living with them in this house on past visits had always had the bedroom at the end of the hall. This is where the light is coming from. She stands in the doorway and sees Daniel, sitting in the rocker with a 6 or 7 month old baby in his arms. The other child is sleeping peacefully in his crib on his stomach, his little butt sticking up in the air. Daniel is talking softly to the little boy whose sobs are just subsiding as his daddy holds him. Daniel looks up at Sam and says, very quietly to the child, "Mommy's here now." Sam backs up out of the room and then runs down the stairs and out into the street. She can't burn this house but can she live in it?

Sam looked down at the pad of paper. She had written "DAD," in block letters. Suddenly she thought of Jacob. She hadn't even asked General Hammond if Jacob had been informed when SG-1 went missing for 5 months. He started a very difficult long term mission right before she went missing. Damn it. She was going to send a message to Jacob, to her dad. She needed him now more than she had since she was a little girl. 


	3. Chapter 3

Daniel sat in his car in front of Janet's house. His thoughts were chaotic. She must know about the babies since she was Sam's doctor. At first he had been angry that she would have gotten involved with him when she had that information but he didn't. Then he began to review their conversations and realized that she hadn't realized that he didn't know. That whole weird conversation on the first day they had gone out became clearer. For some reason, she had assumed he had just found out then. Subsequently, he had been quite vehement about not wanting to discuss Sam at all so there had been no further conversation. He remembered that Janet hadn't expected Sam to be upset about their dating. Put together with Sam's turndown of his proposal a short time ago, he became convinced that she had even asked Sam for permission to get involved with him. 

He looked toward the house. There was a light on. It was only about 9:00 after all. It occurred to him that Janet may well have seen his car parked out on the street and wondered why he was just sitting there, not coming in. He really couldn't just drive away. She didn't deserve that. He got out of the car and walked to the front door, very slowly, still uncertain as to what he would do or say when she answered it. He didn't need to ring the bell because the door opened just as he got there and Janet stood haloed by the light from behind her. She took his hand, drew him into the house, and closed the door.

She reached up and touched his cheek. "It's bad, isn't it?"

"She is so wonderful," he thought. "She focuses on me, not some other guy. She sees how I'm feeling, really sees me." He allowed her to lead him into the dimly lit living room and pull him down on the couch.

"Where's Cass?" he asked making conversation, not brilliant conversation, but conversation.

Janet waved her hand dismissively. "She's up in her room. She just took a call and she'll be up there forever." She squeezed his hand and said, "What happened, Danny?"

He studied his hand, clasped in hers. "Sam told us, Jack and me. She told us about the babies."

Janet gasped. "When?" Then she said, weakly, answering her own question, "Tonight. You mean she told you tonight?"

He nodded mutely. "Oh, Danny, I thought she told you weeks ago. I never…" she trailed off, obviously upset.

He turned then and cupped her face in his hands. "I figured out that you must have thought I knew. And I know she told you she didn't mind if you dated me."

"She told you that?" Janet said, a little incredulously.

"No. What she did do was turn down my marriage proposal. Flat. It was pretty clear how she still visualizes me as the friendly neighborhood eunuch instead of a man."

"She is an absolute fool," Janet said vehemently.

Daniel smiled. "The sun coming out from behind the clouds," Janet thought, lost in his eyes.

"You really believe that, don't you?" he said tenderly.

"Don't ever doubt it," Janet whispered softly and kissed him, a kiss like a benediction.

Daniel reached past her and turned on the heavy bronze floor lamp, flooding her face with soft light. "I want to look at your dear face," he said. He smoothed a hand across her hair. "I've been walking around for years emotionally anemic, bleeding from the thousand little cuts she gives me without meaning to. She rips me to shreds and you heal me." He paused a moment and then said, "I fell in love with Sam while I was still mourning Sha're."

Janet raised her eyebrows and he said, "Yeah, I'm admitting it. I've been in love with Sam for a long time, too long. But I tell you that, about Sha're and Sam, so that you know, so that you can believe, that loving Sam doesn't prevent me from falling in love with you."

Janet looked at him, clearly not sure she was understanding. She said slowly, "You love me? Is that what you're saying? I mean, you just proposed to Sam. I want to believe you but it seems awfully fast."

"I proposed to her because she's carrying my child. That's what a man does." He pulled Janet across his lap and into his arms. "These last few weeks with you have been so wonderful. I had almost walled off my feelings for her. Tonight she put up the rest of the wall. It's over. I'm free."

He could tell she was still unconvinced. "You need to trust my feelings for you totally. We haven't been intimate yet, not completely, and that should wait until you really believe in us."

"Could you be any more perfect," she purred. "Let's explore what we can do."

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Three weeks later the Tokra code was transmitted through the gate and a spare, grey haired man walked down the ramp. George Hammond met him and they hugged affectionately. "Where's my little girl?" Jacob asked his old friend.

"She's in her office. I'll walk you there," Hammond said easily, clapping Jacob on the shoulder and steering him out of the gateroom.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob noticed a couple of the men on duty, looking at him sideways and sniggering. "Is something going on, George?" he asked. "Sam's message was a masterpiece of non-information, hedged about with reassurances, that although it was important that I come, everything was all right."

"She really is okay, Jacob, just dealing with some changes," came the only moderately reassuring reply.

When they reached the door of Sam's office, Hammond clapped Jacob on the shoulder again and said, "I'd like to spend some time visiting with you later."

Jacob nodded and returned Hammond's half salute as he disappeared around the corner. He rapped softly and entered Sam's office without waiting. She was sitting at her desk. When she saw him, he was dismayed to see how uncertain her smile was. He was also appalled by her butch haircut. What had she been thinking? She didn't get up to meet him but, instead, reached out for him to come to her and give her a hug. He did so gladly but the strangeness of all of it didn't mitigate his growing unease.

He sat on the edge of her guest chair and said, "Sammy, what's going on?"

"General Hammond said he told you about our captivity and rescue? I saw you looking at my head. Don't try to deny it," she said as an aside seeing the expression on his face. "I know it looks awful. They kept my head shaved."

"No torture, right? George said you weren't harmed."

"It depends on how you define harmed. We don't know how they did it. It might have been using in vitro embryos. It might have been artificial insemination. Whatever. The upshot is they made me pregnant." She stood up for just a second to give him the full effect.

"With some sort of alien baby?" Jacob could barely get it out.

"No. And no. It's two babies, twins. They're mine and Jack and Daniel are their fathers."

Jacob was on his feet immediately, resting his hands on the desk and leaning toward her. "What, may I ask, are they planning on doing about it?"

"Dad, wait a minute here. This isn't like we were lovers or they raped me or something. They were made fathers without their consent. They're going to be there for the babies, act like fathers."

Jacob got hold of himself with a visible effort. "Daniel surely offered to marry you."

Sam was very surprised. "How did you know that?"

Jacob rolled his eyes. "Sam, you may be certifiably brilliant but in some area of life, you are a complete moron."

"Dad," Sam said with asperity,"I don't need that."

"It's true. The man has been in love with you forever and he's a very decent guy. There is no way he wouldn't propose to the woman carrying his child, particularly when he loves her so much."

"So, what are the wedding plans?" Jacob said, listening with half a mind, communing with Selmak and trying figure how much and when he could be on earth.

"There's no wedding planned. I turned him down," Sam said, sounding very tired.

"You what?" Jacob was back on his feet, leaning on her desk again. "Sam, please, please reconsider. You love the guy. He's your very best friend. That's the basis for a good marriage."

"What about passion? What about being IN love? I want what you and Mom had," Sam said brushing away a tear.

Jacob closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Sam, I'm going to tell you something that you can never repeat, particularly to Mark. I didn't ever want you to know. Your mother and I had to get married because she was pregnant with your brother. She was the girl next door, my very good friend, but it wasn't all those things you just said, not at first. We were good Catholic kids and it never occurred to us that we had any option other than making it work."

Sam was looking at him aghast. "But you weren't in love with someone else. It wasn't the same."

"How do you know Sammy?" her father asked. He sighed. "Just out of curiosity, am I correct in assuming that Jack did not ask you to marry him?"

Sam said nothing. Jacob nodded. "You don't love Jack, Sam. You love the idea of Jack. How much companionship have you ever actually had with him? Huh? Long conversations? What would the two of you talk about in between bouts of wild monkey sex? And, by the way, he's almost as old as I am. The amount of wild monkey anything he's got in him – even given the famous gate effect they're beginning to suspect rejuvenates those of us with years of travel – is not going to be all that much."

Jacob was struck with another thought. He asked, deeply concerned, "How are they going to save your career and Jack's when the real reason is classified? It just looks like you guys fraternized big time."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, that's a mess. General Hammond put something in our records that makes it clear that neither of us did anything we shouldn't have but that what happened is classified. The official story, and its been spread to everyone who knows the real one, is that my biological clock went off. I asked both Jack and Daniel to be donors, and rather than make a choice, I used both donations." She saw that her father was still looking solemn. "You don't think it's going to work, do you?"

Jacob said, "I know you want the truth, not something to make you feel better. The truth is it can't help but slow you down a little. Your rate of promotion, you know. There'll always be people who will wonder. But considering what a high achiever you are, it won't be catastrophic."

Sam made a face and then said, "Thanks for the honesty, Dad. Jack and I talked about it a little and that's the read we both had."

Jacob laced his fingers together and closed his eyes for a moment. "Sam, I know I've been way out of line telling you what to do here. I just don't want you to make a mistake." He got up and said briskly, "Okay. Take me out and get me my annual huge juicy hamburger and fries."

Jacob stayed for two days. He didn't bring up Daniel again until he was about to step on the ramp and walk through the gate. He hugged her and said, "Think about, Sam."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Thinking about it became all she could do. She got up in morning and she looked in the mirror and she saw a woman with very little hair in a maternity uniform. Each morning she was a little more willing to consider marrying Daniel, but, looking in the mirror, a little less confident that she had what it took to take him back from Janet.

She felt like an almost universal object of pity. People talked in hushed tones around her as if she had terminal cancer. Not for her the typical questions for pregnant women like what was she going to name it? Did she know the sex? Did she want to know the sex? Instead most people pretended, very ineptly, that they didn't notice anything at all.

Almost the entire base knew the real story about the alien experimentation she had been subjected to even though they dutifully repeated the official one about artificial insemination. Everyone knew who her babies' fathers were. The alternative would have been to let people think she was carrying alien babies. She had been joking to herself when she had predicted it but there actually were people who believed that her pregnancies had been conceived the good old fashioned way. To these people, the real story just seemed a smoke screen for some good old fashion prison sex.

She was off SG-1 until after the babies were born and assigned various research activities on base. Hell, thinking about her responsibilities to her children, she would probably never go off-world again. This didn't help her frame of mind. There was one ray of sunshine, Teal'c. He had stayed away from her for the first few weeks after they were rescued. Finally she had cornered him and demanded an explanation.

"I have dishonored myself and am not worthy to be your friend," he had said, keeping his eyes lowered.

"You did what? I don't see it Teal'c. If you hadn't been better than the rest of us at avoiding capture, clever about scouting out what they did with us, and bringing in help, we'd still be there," Sam had said, very surprised at his perspective.

"I ran MajorCarter. I did not stay and fight," he said, making no excuses for himself.

"To fight another day, Teal'c. If you had stood your ground, we would all have been captured. None of us, NONE of us, believe you did the wrong thing."

He had looked up at her then and a huge grin had broken over his face. "Thank you MajorCarter," was all he had said but it had clearly made a world of difference to him. From that point forward, he stopped by on a daily basis, when he wasn't off-world, and seemed to have no problem behaving completely naturally with her.

The same could not be said for Daniel and Jack. Jack dutifully showed up every couple of days to ask how she was feeling and if there was anything she needed. He was very interested in looking at the ultrasound and any information at all she had to offer about their child. But other than the child itself, their conversations were extremely superficial and never went anywhere near the themes they had talked about at his house.

Daniel, on the other hand, called her on the phone every other day or sent e-mail. It had been a couple of weeks since she had actually seen him in person. When they'd had misunderstandings in the past, he had always been conciliatory, even when it wasn't mainly or, even in any significant way, his fault. Looking back on it, he had been one of the most forgiving people she had ever met and he had never avoided her. She began to realize that whether she was romantically in love with him or not, she had to have him in her life to be happy.

Sam began visiting their dream house regularly in her mind and pushing the boundaries of the imaginings to a complete marriage, testing the waters, and trying to understand herself.

_She walks into the bedroom and drops like a stone on their queen sized, four-poster bed. All she can do is lie there, sprawled out full length on her stomach. Suddenly the bed sags next to her and strong hands begin kneading her back, her neck. It feels wonderful. She starts to feel drowsy but then the massage goes from one you could get from your physical therapist to one she imagines is available from those folks at that sort of seedy massage place on the run down commercial strip on the way out of town. He's massaging her buttocks but his hand strays frequently to other places in the neighborhood. Then he drops on top of her and starts kissing her neck and sliding his hands under her._

_She rolls over and looks into his handsome face, blue eyes burning into blue eyes. He butterflies kisses on her eyes before kissing her deeply. She realizes that he isn't wearing a shirt. In fact he isn't wearing pants either. Suddenly she wants to be skin to skin and starts tugging ineffectually at her shirt. He smiles at her eagerness and slides off her long enough to quickly divest her of everything she is wearing as she lies there bonelessly, enjoying looking at him. He comes back to her and if it was good before, now it gets incredible._

Her decision made, Sam went to see Jack. He looked up surprised when she walked in to his office without knocking and shut the door behind her. All their contact since the night at his house had been initiated by him. "Can we talk?" she asked, sitting down.

"It looks like we're going to," he said, but without an edge.

She said, "I miss you being you. You've been so damn careful around me ever since our unfortunate little talk."

"I feel like a jerk, Sam," he said. "I hated saying all that stuff and I hated hurting you."

"Get over it, okay. I'm not upset with you and I'm in complete agreement with what you said. I need us to go back to being true friends who are comfortable with each other."

"Deal," he smiled. "Can we quit talking about feelings now?"

"If you'll help me get everyone on this base to start treating me like a normal pregnant woman. However I got pregnant, these children are a blessing and I love them already. I want to have full expectant mother experience."

Jack grinned. "All right. First thing then, we need to start talking about what we do to your house to really make it childproof and have a reasonable nursery or think about moving."

"I should have known you'd flash on the home improvement side of this, right away. Guy stuff. Tools. Not the layette." She grinned back. "And I want to have everyone over. Get back to being friends again. Would Sara come? Can she be my friend in this or would it be too hard for her?"

"We've talked about it a lot since you told me," Jack grimaced. "She did have a really hard time at first. I mean I couldn't tell her everything right? Aliens mugged you and left you pregnant. It's a little classified. But it all happened before we got back together and she's okay now."

"All right then. We'll do it this Friday and I'm counting on you to drag Daniel there."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "With Janet?"

Sam shrugged, "He wouldn't come without her, right?"

She left Jack's office feeling challenged but not down and out. Not yet. It couldn't be as hard as some of the astrophysics problems she had solved, could it? "People all over the world without half my intelligence," she told herself, not wasting time on false modesty, "Get their man right and left. I just need to start working on a solution." She decided to drop by the dream house.

S_am gets up out of bed and puts on a robe, looking at her sleepy, satisfied husband fondly. "Where are you going?" he asks groggily._

_"I just have something I want to do," she says evasively. "I'll be right back."_

_She goes down to the garage and takes the sack out of the trunk, grabs a hammer and a nail and returns to the house. She decides that the blank wall in the laundry room is somewhere she will look at it several times a week. In the laundry room, she takes the small framed poster out of its sack and positions it on the wall. After marking the spot for the nail, she puts it back down. She is about to start hammering when Daniel shows up at the door, yawning and scratching his head. She should have known curiosity always drove her man, even when exhausted._

_She drives the nail in the wall and hangs the poster up. Daniel squints at the very large letters and reads them with difficulty without his glasses. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." He turns to her with a quizzical expression, "Huh?"_

_"We're journeying through life together, right?"_

_He's sure she's lost it now. "Uh huh. And you just had to get up in the middle of the night and remind yourself of that?" He walks up behind her, kisses her hair fondly, and wraps his arms around her._

Back in her real house, Sam looked at herself in the mirror and, for the first time, found encouragement. Her hair was long enough that it had a sort of Audrey Hepburn thing going on and, as to her shape, her dad had told her that when her mother was pregnant with her, she had never looked more beautiful to him, that a man finds a woman carrying his child beautiful if he cares about her. Sam rested her hand on her respectably sized belly and said, "Good night, Jackie and Danny." She turned out the light, climbed into bed, silently asked the other member of her team for help, and told her babies, "Just watch your mama go."


End file.
